Q: What other kinds of misconceptions about electronic music are there?

It’s enormously misunderstood by people who play conventional music or who play conventional instruments. It’s not justified. There’s just not aware. They’re threatened by it and they don’t consider it to be as valuable as what they do with their more traditional form of creating sound and music. It’s an old story. It especially relates to jazz, I imagine for rock people, it’s the same idea.

People are afraid of things they don’t understand. They don’t know how to relate. To them, it threatens their security, their existence, their career, image. Miles Davis was someone who wasn’t afraid of that. He fully embraced those possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition but he didn’t consider himself part of a tradition. He considered himself a person who was just trying to experience things and evolve. Evolve is the key. People who are smart enough to do that or are willing to try will embrace these ideas as new things and encouraging things and a new world. So whoever will want to be in that new world will be open and think about it and make an effort. And the people who feel that what they do is precious and in the tradition and preserving an art form, which is all complete rubbish, they’ll not. They’ll stick to what they believe and think it’s all cold and non-human. There’s as much musicality, artistry and genius and vision in the turntablist as there is in an alto saxophone player. You just have to have your mind ready to accept that. That’s the new mind, not one who’s in the past. – Bill Laswell interview, 04/2000

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” DnB vs. Jazz ”

01. Charles Mingus – Myself When I Am Real
Mingus Plays Piano: spontaneous compositions and improvisations (1963)
02. Venetian Snares – Kétsarkú Mozgalom
Rossz Csillag Allat Született (Planet Mu, 2005)
03. Brian Eno/Jah Wobble – Spinner
Spinner (Allsa, 1997)
04. Four Tet - The Butterfly Effect
Dialogue (Output Recordings, 1999)
05. Miles Davis – On the corner (Subterranean channel ”Bill Laswell” mix)
Panthalassa: The Remixes (1999)
06. The Third Eye Foundation – For All The Brothers And Sisters
You Guys Kill Me (Merge Records, 1998)
07. Derek Bailey – Concrete (cement-mix)
Guitar, drums ‘n’ bass (Avant Japan, 1997)
08. Bela Bartok – No.34 Farewell: Adagio/No.35 Ballad: Moderato
Bartók for Children (Naxos, 2005)
09. Venetian Snares – Circle Pit
Detrimentalist (Planet Mu, 2008)

note: A small side not to this blog entry: “at least some thorny, complex, difficult-to-understand pieces are beautiful and profound, and those listeners who come to know them well derive immense pleasure from them. (DJA) ”

This list is a behind envelop sketch. In one corner jazz attempts to free itself from limistation of form while still connecting to its root, in another corner DnB tendency to cram ever more dense pattern, trying to escape its dance functionality. How fast can everything go? Is it still enjoyable, or listenable even? Finally, do I even care about the sound. does it emote instead of rambling noise?

Well, since it’s a quickie sketch. I get to pick the best tracks I have in my HD. Only allowing varied rhythm, I tried to imagine what will Miles Davis would do to reign DnB rough and jagged drum sampling to paint elegant blues mood. Interesting things happens trying to keep the whole thing together before flying apart. Obviously DnB puts complex drum sampling in the foreground in place of melodic instruments. at the end I don’t even try, I just put different tracks with wide texture contrast, something DnB is good at. See? There is use for playing largo piece very well after all.

Anyway, all tracks are favorite MdM artists that everybody is familiar with, so in case the list fails to answer questions, at least it’s a parade of great recent electronic works. All hail Venetian Snares.

Enjoy the night jazzy DnB list.

see also: Variation 1
image: multiple x’s